She spent almost the entire day following me around the house, clinging to my leg and shouting and crying. Nothing I did made her happy, she was being terribly needy and after several hours of trying to either ignore her or calm her down, I finally snapped. I burst into tears and sent Graham an angry text. He called me a minute later and asked what was wrong. I shouted at him that his daughter was driving me crazy and I had so much work to do around the house that I couldn't handle both. I was ready to get in the car and just drive away forever.
He tried to calm me down by saying I should take her to the park where she can run around and not bother me, but it was cold and windy outside and I didn't want to deal with the bad weather on top of my horrible mood.
Ava and I have had several days like this and yesterday I think I reached my limit. I ended up Googling something like 'clingy child driving mom crazy' to find out what other parents do when they're in this situation. I stumbled across an article called 'The Highly Sensitive Child.' It was actually an excerpt from a book, which I discovered at the end (I had wondered why it hadn't seemed finished.)
After a few paragraphs, I started crying again. I began to realise that Ava might be a difficult child, and it's not going to change any time soon. I couldn't believe what I was reading. It was as though they had studied Ava and written about her specifically!
" A highly sensitive child is often bright, articulate, creative, and insightful, easily able to tune into other people and their feelings. She may display a deep sense of empathy and compassion for other people. "
Just after I read that and was crying, Ava said 'What's wrong mummy? What's wrong mummy?' over and over again.
" And yet, she is also clinging and whiny, sometimes bossy and demanding. "
She is very bossy! She's always demanding me to move, sit down, copy what she's doing, or that I pick her up.
" A sensitive infant is often colicky, finicky, irritable, demanding. She may cry constantly for the first year of her life (or so it may seem to an exhausted parnent) and want to be held continually. "
It didn't last as long as a year, but for the first 6 - 7 months, she would only sleep or calm down when she was in someone's arms, or in the bath tub.
" ... She fell asleep only when her mother or father rocked to for an hour or longer. Several times each night she woke up crying and needed to be rocked back to sleep. "
I can't even remember how long we did that for. So many nights we were in her room rocking her or rubbing her back for ages until she was finally in a deep enough sleep that she didn't realise we had stopped. I'm sure she was more than a year old before we were finally able to stop doing this.
The excerpt just goes on and on describing Ava in almost every way. There were only a few traits that she doesn't have, but everything else described her perfectly. I've decided to order the book because I need to find out how I'm supposed to handle this behaviour. Although it made me sad to discover that she's highly sensitive and going to be hard work, I feel better knowing that there's a reason why she's behaving this way and that there's a way to work with it.
The strangest part about reading the article, was that I recognized my younger self in a lot of the description. I don't remember how I felt as a two year old, but I certainly remember things from my elementary school years. I was never very good at making friends, I was shy became embarassed easily. It didn't take much to hurt my feelings, and that still goes to this day.
The excerpt just goes on and on describing Ava in almost every way. There were only a few traits that she doesn't have, but everything else described her perfectly. I've decided to order the book because I need to find out how I'm supposed to handle this behaviour. Although it made me sad to discover that she's highly sensitive and going to be hard work, I feel better knowing that there's a reason why she's behaving this way and that there's a way to work with it.
The strangest part about reading the article, was that I recognized my younger self in a lot of the description. I don't remember how I felt as a two year old, but I certainly remember things from my elementary school years. I was never very good at making friends, I was shy became embarassed easily. It didn't take much to hurt my feelings, and that still goes to this day.
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